Basic Tutorial: Adding a project to version control

Configuration

Identifying yourself

Whenever the history of the repository is changed (technically, whenever a commit is created), Git keeps track of the user who created that commit. The identification consists of a name (typically a person's name) and an e-mail address. This information is stored in file ~/.gitconfig under dedicated keys.

EGit will ask you for this information when you create your first commit. By default, this dialog is shown only once until you create a new workspace or tick the checkbox "Show initial configuration dialog" on the Git Preference page:

You can also untick "Don't show this dialog again" if you want to see it again later.

Instead of using this dialog, you can always change this information using the Git configuration:

Click Preferences > Team > Git > Configuration

Click New Entry and enter the key value pairs user.email and user.name

Setting up the Home Directory on Windows

Add the environment variable HOME to your environment variables.

In Windows 7, type "enviroment window" at the start menu

Select "Edit environment variables for your account"

Click the "New" button.

Enter "HOME" in the name field

Enter "%USERPROFILE%" or some other path in the value field.

Click OK, and OK again. You have just added the Home directory on Windows.

EGit needs this path for looking up the user configuration (.gitconfig). HOME should point to your home directory e.g. C:\Users\Tom. Ensure correct case! E.g. C:\users instead of C:\Users may cause problems!

If the HOME variable is not defined the home directory will be calculated by concatenating HOMEDRIVE and HOMEPATH.

If both HOME and HOMEDRIVE are not defined HOMESHARE will be used.

EGit shows a warning if HOME is not defined explicitly:

Create Repository

Create a new Java project HelloWorld

Select the project, click File > Team > Share Project

Select repository type Git and click Next

To configure the Git repository select the new project HelloWorld

Click Create Repository to initialize a new Git repository for the HelloWorld project. If your project already resides in the working tree of an exisiting Git repository the repository is chosen automatically.

Click Finish to close the wizard.

The decorator text "[master]" behind the project shows that this project is tracked in a repository on the master branch and the question mark decorators show that the .classpath and .project and the .settings files are not yet under version control

Track Changes

Click Team > Add on the project node

The + decorators show that now the project's files have been added to version control

Mark the "bin" folder as "ignored by Git", either by right-clicking on it and selecting Team > Ignore or by creating a file .gitignore in the project folder with the following content

/bin

This excludes the bin folder from Git's list of tracked files.

Add .gitignore to version control (Team > Add):

Click Team > Commit in the project context menu

Enter a commit message explaining your change, the first line (followed by an empty line) will become the short log for this commit. By default the author and committer are taken from the .gitconfig file in your home directory.

You may click Add Signed-off-by to add a Signed-off-by: tag.

If you are committing the change of another author you may alter the author field to give the name and email address of the author.

Click Commit to commit your first change.

Note that the decorators of the committed files changed.

Inspect History

Click Team > Show in History from the context menu to inspect the history of a resource

Create a new Java class Hello.java and implement it

Add it to version control and commit your change

Improve your implementation and commit the improved class

The resource history should now show 2 commits for this class

Click the Compare Mode toggle button in the History View

Double click src/Hello.java in the Resource list of the History View to open your last committed change in the Compare View

Congratulations, you just have mastered your first project using Git !

Create Local Repository

Create Repository at GitHub

On the next screen you can see the URLs you may use to access your fresh new repository:

click SSH to choose the SSH protocol. It can be used for read and write access

click HTTP to choose the HTTP protocol. It can also be used for read and write access.

click Git Read-Only to choose the anonymous git protocol for cloning. It's the most efficient protocol git supports. Since the git protocol doesn't support authentication it's usually used to provide efficient read-only access to public repositories.

Eclipse SSH Configuration

Open the Eclipse Preferences and ensure that your SSH2 home is configured correctly (usually this is ~/.ssh) and contains your SSH2 keys

if you don't have SSH keys yet you may generate them on the second tab Key Management of this dialog, use a good pass phrase to protect your private key, for more details see "working with key passphrases"

Push Upstream

Click Team > Remote > Push... and copy and paste the SSH URL of your new github repository

If you are behind a firewall which doesn't allow SSH traffic use the github HTTPS URL instead and provide your github user and password instead of using the uploaded public SSH key. To store your credentials into the Eclipse secure store click Store in Secure Store.

Note: many HTTP proxies are configured to block HTTP URLs containing a user name, since disclosing a user name in an HTTP URL is considered a security risk. In that case remove the username from the HTTP URL and only provide it in the user field. It will be sent as an HTTP header.

Click Next and on first connection accept GitHub's host key.

Enter your SSH key's passphrase and click OK.

On the next wizard page click Add all branches spec to map your local branch names 1:1 to the same branch names in the destination repository.

Click Next. The push confirmation dialog will show a preview of the changes that will be pushed to the destination repository.

Click Finish to confirm that you want to push these changes.

The next dialog reports the result of the push operation.

Point your browser at your GitHub repository to see that your new repository content has arrived

EGit Tutorial (EclipseCon Europe Nov 2011)

This tutorial was developed using EGit 1.2-SNAPSHOT so you should use at least this version.
Newer versions may provide an easier way to do certain steps, look at the EGit "New and Noteworthy" documentation.

Exercises

Concepts

Git is built on a few simple and very powerful ideas. Knowing them helps to understand more easily how git works.

Repository

The Repository or Object Database stores all objects which make up the history of the project. All objects in this database are identified through a secure 20 byte SHA-1 hash of the object content. This has several advantages:

comparing two objects boils down to comparing two SHA-1 hashes

since object names are computed from the object content in the same way in every git repository the same object will be stored under the same name in all repositories which happen to contain this object

repository corruption can easily be detected by checking if the SHA-1 object name still is the secure hash of the object's content

Git has four object types :

A Blob object stores file content

A Tree object stores the directory structure and contains Blob objects and other Tree objects together with their file system names and modes

A Commit object represents a snapshot of the directory structure at the time of the commit and has links to its predecessor and successor Commit objects which form an acyclic graph of the repository revisions forming the repository history.

A Tag object is a symbolic named link to another repository object which contains the object name and type of the referenced object and optionally information about the one who created the tag and signing information.

The object database is stored in the .git/objects directory. Objects are either stored as loose objects or in a pack format efficiently packing many objects into a single file to enable efficient storage and transport of objects.

Trust

Git provides a built-in trust chain through secure SHA-1 hashes which allow to verify if objects obtained from a (potentially untrusted) source are correct and have not been modified since they have been created.

If you get the signed tag for e.g. a project release which you can verify with e.g. the tagger's (e.g. the project lead's) public signing key
git ensures that the chain of trust covers the following:

the signed tag identifies a commit object

the commit object represents exactly one project revision including its content and history

the commit object contains the tree of blob objects and other tree objects representing the directory structure of the project revision

the blob objects contain the file contents for this project revision

All the involved object names can be checked for consistency using the SHA-1 algorithm to ensure the correctness of the project revision and this way ensure that the entire history can be trusted.

Index

The Git Index is a binary file stored in the .git/index directory containing a sorted list of file names, file modes, file meta data used to efficiently detect file modifications and the SHA-1 object name of blob objects.

It has the following important properties:

The index contains all information necessary to generate a single uniquely defined tree object. E.g. a commit operation generates this tree, stores it in the object database and associates it with the commit.

The index enables fast comparison of the tree it defines with the current working directory. This is achieved by storing additional meta data about the involved files in the index data.

The index can efficiently store information about merge conflicts between the trees involved in the merge so that for each pathname there is enough information about the involved trees to enable a three-way merge.

Working Directory

The working directory is the directory used to modify files for the next commit. By default it is located one level above the .git directory.
Making a new commit involves typically the following steps :

Checkout the branch the new commit shall be based on, this changes the working directory so that it reflects the HEAD revision of the branch.

Do modifications in the working directory

Tell git about these modifications (add modified files). This transfers the modified file contents into the object database and prepares the tree to be committed in the index.

Commit the tree prepared in the index into the object database.

The result is a new commit object and the HEAD of the current branch moves to the new commit.

Recording Changes in the Repository

You start from a fresh checkout of a branch of a local repository. You want to do some changes and record snapshots of these changes in the repository whenever you reach a state of your changes you want to record.

Each file in the working directory can either be tracked or untracked.

Tracked files are those which were in the last snapshot or files which have been newly staged into the index. They can be unmodified, modified, or staged.

Untracked files are all other files which were not in the last snapshot and have not been added to the index.

When you first clone a repository all files in the working directory will be tracked and unmodified since they have been freshly checked out and you didn't start editing them yet.

As you edit files git will recognize they are modified since you have modified them since the last commit.
You stage the modified files into the index and then commit the staged changes and the cycle repeats.

This lifecycle is illustrated here

Tasks

Creating Repositories

Considerations for Git Repositories to be used in Eclipse

The short story

When setting up Git Repositories with EGit, there are two recommendations for the creation of "productive" (as opposed for "playground") Repositories:

Don't create the Repository within the Eclipse workspace

Be careful when cloning or creating a Repository

Make sure to use the Git Sharing Wizard correctly

Don't create a Repository with an Eclipse project as root

Make sure to use the Git Sharing Wizard correctly

The first one happens when you specify a workspace folder during cloning or creation of a Repository.

Both of the above will happen when you use the Git Sharing Wizard from an Eclipse project that you have created manually in your workspace without taking precautions (the wizard has been fixed in the latest version).

Below you will find some motivation for these recommendations.

The longer story

Eclipse Workspace and Repository working directory

Git Repositories can be created in different ways, for example by cloning from an existing Repository, by creating one from scratch, or by using the EGit Sharing wizard.

In any case (unless you create a "bare" Repository, but that's not discussed here), the new Repository is essentially a folder on the local hard disk which contains the "working directory" and the metadata folder. The metadata folder is a dedicated child folder named ".git" and often referred to as ".git-folder". It contains the actual repository (i.e. the Commits, the References, the logs and such).

The metadata folder is totally transparent to the Git client, while the working directory is used to expose the currently checked out Repository content as files for tools and editors.

Typically, if these files are to be used in Eclipse, they must be imported into the Eclipse workspace in one way or another. In order to do so, the easiest way would be to check in .project files from which the "Import Existing Projects" wizard can create the projects easily. Thus in most cases, the structure of a Repository containing Eclipse projects would look similar to something like this:

Implications

The above has the following implications:

It is probably not a good idea to make a project the root folder of your Repository

The reason is that you will never be able to add another project to this Repository, as the .project file will occupy the root folder; you could still add projects as sub-folders, but this kind of project nesting is known to cause lots of problems all over the place. In order to add another project, you would have to move the project to a sub-folder in the Repository and add the second project as another sub-folder before you could commit this change.

It is a good idea to keep your Repository outside of your Eclipse Workspace

There are several reasons for this:

The new Repository will consider the complete folder structure of the Eclipse workspace as (potential) content. This can result in performance issues, for example when calculating the changes before committing (which will scan the complete .metadata folder, for example); more often than not, the workspace will contain dead folders (e.g. deleted projects) which semantically are not relevant for EGit but can not be excluded easily.

The metadata (.git-) folder will be a child of the Eclipse Workspace. It is unclear whether this might cause unwanted folder traversals by Eclipse.

the wizard automatically moves up the default repository location to the parent folder /repos/examples/ since multiple projects have been selected

click Create Repository and Finish

Starting from existing Git Repositories

In order to work with the content of a Git repository in the Eclipse workbench, the contained files and folders must be imported as projects. In principle, this import can be done using the generic "New Project" or "Import..." wizards, since the working directory of a Git Repository is just a normal directory in the local file system. However, the newly created projects would still have to be shared manually with Git. The "Import Projects from Git" wizards integrates project import and sharing and also offers some extra convenience.

Starting the import wizard

To start the wizard click Import > Git > Projects from Git

If you started in a clean workspace, the first page will display an empty list:

Before you can continue, you need to add one or several Git repositories to the list. If you have already repositories in the list, this step is optional.

Cloning or adding Repositories

There are two ways to add Git repositories to the list:

Clone a remote repository

Add an existing repository from your local file system

Cloning a Repository

The first option is used if you start with a remote repository. The clone operation will copy that repository to your local file system. To start the Clone Wizard click Clone.... The Clone Wizard is described in more detail in Cloning Remote Repositories. Upon successful completion of the clone operation, the newly cloned repository appears in the list automatically.

Adding a Repository

The second option is useful if you already have a repository in your local file system, for example because you have cloned it earlier, you created it from scratch or you copied it from somewhere else. Click Add...; and select a directory in the local file system. Press Search to trigger a scan for Git repositories contained in this directory. If Git repositories are found, they will be listed and you can select repositories to add :

After successful completion, the repository list should contain some repositories:

Selecting a Repository from the List

You can now select a repository and click Next. On the following wizard page, you will decide how to import projects.

Importing projects

This page offers a group with radio buttons that allow you to select a wizard and a directory tree that optionally allows you to select a folder in the working directory.

Wizard for project import

Import Existing Projects

If this radio button is selected, the wizard will scan the local file system for .project files and display the projects found for being imported. This is the most comfortable solution and should be used if .project files are checked into the Repository.

Limiting the Scope for Project Import

In this case, the directory tree at the bottom is active. You can limit the search for .project files by selecting a folder in this tree, otherwise the complete working directory of the repository will be scanned. On the next page, a list of the found projects (if any) will be shown. This is very similar to the generic Import Existing Projects wizard, but has some additional filtering capabilities:

Use the New Projects Wizard

When this option is chosen, the generic "New Project" wizard will open. After completion of the "New Project" wizard, the "Import Projects from Git" wizard will resume and assist with sharing the projects you just created.

In this case, the directory tree at the bottom is inactive, as the selection is not relevant for the "New Project" wizard.

Import as General Project

This option can be helpful when there are neither .project files available nor a suitable "New Project" wizard applies to the content of the Git Repository. If chosen, the wizard will generate a .project file and point the project to a folder of the Repository's working directory. The result is a "General Project".

By default, the newly generated project will point to the working directory of the Repository. By selecting some folder from the directory tree at the bottom, you can have the project generated for that folder.

Click Next to open a simple dialog for entering a name and a directory for the new project:

By default the suggested project name matches the name of the directory.

Working with remote Repositories

Cloning Remote Repositories

Using the Git Clone Wizard you may clone remote repositories using different transport protocols.

The wizard can be started from the "Import Projects from Git" wizard using
Import... > Git > Projects from Git > Next > Clone...

or from the "Git Repositories View" (described in Managing Repositories) using the Clone a Git Repository toolbar button or view menu.

Repository Selection

On the first page of the wizard enter the location of the remote repository:

URI - The complete URI of the remote repository or the path on the file system. This field is automatically synchronized with the other fields. Note that you can use the Local file... button to browse for a local directory and that the URI field offers content assist by offering previously used values

Host - The name of the remote host or empty if cloning from the file system.

Repository Path - Path to the remote repository or on the file system.

Protocol - One of the protocols described below.

Port - Port number.

User - The user name used for authentication.

Password The password used for authentication.

Store in Secure Store Whether the password is saved in the Eclipse secure store.

Note: If you are behind a firewall you may need to configure your proxy settings (Preferences > General > Network Connections). Many HTTP proxies are configured to block URLs containing a username (and/or password) like e.g. http://fred:topsecret@egit.eclipse.org/egit.git hence it's recommended to use the user, password fields at the bottom of the wizard page, the credentials will be transmitted as HTTP headers.

Branch Selection

On the next page choose which branches shall be cloned from the remote repository:

If you are not sure which branches you need, simply hit "Select All".

You can filter the branches by their name by typing using the text control above the list. Note, however, that branches that have been checked will always be shown in the list, i.e. they will not be filtered.

Local Destination

On the next page define where you want to store the repository on the local file system and define some initial settings.

Directory - The directory which will contain the Git repository. It will be created by the wizard if it does not yet exist.

Initial branch - Choose here which local branch will be created and initially checked out.

Remote name - Define a name for the remote repository. The default is "origin".

The default root path for storing Git repositories can be configured in the preference
Team > Git > Default Repository Folder

You can press Finish ob this page or press Next if you are working with Gerrit Code Review and you want to configure your repository accordingly.

Gerrit Configuration

configure your repository to select the Compute Change-Id for Gerrit Code Review option in the Commit dialog by default

Select the check box Configure Push to Gerrit Code Review. This has two effects:

The fields in the sections Push URI and Push Configuration get enabled.

When you click Finish the wizard sets the repository configuration parameter gerrit.createchangeid to true. This ensures that the checkbox Compute Change-Id for Gerrit Code Review in the Commit dialog is selected by default. See Commit Message for details.

If you want to configure automatic Change-Id insertion at a later point in time you may use the repository configuration editor (Preferences > Team > Git > Configuration) to set the configuration parameter gerrit.createchangeid to true. If you want this configuration for all your repositories you may put it into ~/.gitconfig then you don't need to repeat this configuration for every new repository you happen to work on.

In the section Push URI you can configure the URI which is used for the default push configuration. It is pre-filled depending on the URI you are cloning from. If you clone with the git protocol, the protocol is automatically changed to ssh, and the default Gerrit ssh port 29418 is automatically added. For protocols which require a user there is a user field for convenience.

The section Push Configuration has one field, Destination Branch. Here you should enter the name of the target branch where changes accepted in the Gerrit code review workflow will be submitted to. This yields an entry HEAD:refs/for/<branchname> in the push configuration of the remote you specified in the clone wizard.

Pushing to other Repositories

Pushing to upstream

If you are working with a local branch which has a so-called "upstream configuration", the most convenient way for pushing relies on this upstream configuration.

Typically local branches are created based on a remote tracking branch. Since the remote tracking branch is associated with a remote and the remote contains the information required to access the corresponding remote repository, it is possible to automatically create this upstream configuration while creating the local branch (see Branching for more information).

When pushing upstream from the local branch, push requires no further parameters and hence can be performed without showing another dialog based on the stored upstream configuration.

In order to push upstream, right-click on a project and select Team > Push to upstream or right-click on a Repository in the Repositories View and click Push to upstream. There is also an action available in the Git Command Group.

Push will then be executed immediately after selecting the action. Once finished, a confirmation dialog will be shown displaying information about the pushed data and/or error messages:

Configuring upstream push

The upstream push can be configured using the "Configure..." button on the confirmation dialog (see above) or by right-clicking a project and selecting Team > Remote > Configure push to upstream....

A configuration dialog will be shown for configuration of push URIs and corresponding branch mappings (RefSpecs):

The dialog is divided into three main sections. In the upper part, information about the current Repository and the currently checked out branch is shown. The outer Group shows the Push Configuration for the remote that is associated with the current branch (in our case, "origin" as shown in the Group text).

In this specific example, there is a warning message that there are several branches that use the remote named "origin". This means that changes in the push configuration will affect all these branches, not just the branch shown in the Branch field.

The URI Group contains two controls, a URI field and a Push URIs list. If the list is empty, the URI in the URI field will be used for Push, if at least one entry is in the Push URIs list, the URIs in the list will be used instead. It should be noted that if the Push URIs list is empty and the URI is changed in this dialog, the new URI will also be used for Pull, so care should be taken when doing so.

The RefMapping Group allows specification of one or several RefSpecs (see Refspecs) for Push.

The "Add" will open a small wizard that helps in the creation of the RefSpecs. You can also paste a RefSpec from the clipboard into the list.

Clicking on the "Advanced" control will show/hide an "Edit (Advanced...)" button that allows for more complex RefSpec editing similar to the Push Wizard below.

The buttons in the lower button bar allow you to save your changes and do the push immediately, save the changes without fetching, dry-run (push without saving the configuration), revert your changes, and Cancel.

Direct Push

Push Wizard

The most powerful (but also most complex) way is using the Push Wizard Team > Remote > Push...

Push URI

If you already configured a Push Specification in the Repositories View you may also select it here using the drop-down list under Configured remote repositories. The Finish button will be enabled if the Push Specification for this remote is configured properly (i.e. has at least one URI and a ref spec.

Otherwise click Custom URI and enter the URI of the upstream repository you want to push to.

This will transfer the newly defined mapping to the list Specifications for push

Other common push specs:

You may e.g. map refs/heads/* to refs/heads/joe/* if you want to name the branches you push to according to your nickname joe. This is useful if multiple users want to publish their local branches on personal branches in a jointly used public repository.

Another usual mapping is to map the source ref HEAD to the destination refs/heads/master. This means you want to map your current HEAD (which might currently point e.g. to any local topic branch) to the upstream master branch.

Delete Ref Specifications

To delete a ref in the destination repository select the ref to be deleted from the drop-down list Remote ref to delete and click Add spec. This will create a corresponding entry in the Specifications for push list. Alternatively you may type in the specification for the refs to be deleted, this may also use wildcards. Pushing Delete Ref Specifications will delete the matching Refs in the destination repository.

Conflicting Push Ref Specifications

If you add multiple conflicting Push Ref Specifications they will be marked in red, solve this by removing or editing the conflicting specs. It is also possible to edit the specs in-place in the list Specifications for push

Push Confirmation

Click Next

This will open the Push Confirmation dialog showing a preview which changes will be pushed to the destination repository. If this does not match your expectation click Back and correct your push specs accordingly.

For ref updates the range of commits to be pushed will be shown in the format <SHA1-from>..<SHA1-to> e.g. d97f5a2e..adfdbfd2 means all commits between d97f5a2e and adfdbfd2 will be pushed.

For refs which do not yet exist in the destination repository [new branch] or [new tag] is displayed.

For refs which will be delete [deleted] is shown.

Select the Push only if remote refs don't change in the mean time check box if you want to be sure that what you see in this preview is also what you get when pushing these changes out.

Select the Show final report dialog only when it differs from this confirmation report check box if you only want to get a report after executing the push if the result differs from this preview.

Push Result Report

Click Finish

Depending on the options you have chosen a push result report dialog is shown

In the box at the bottom the push confirmation message from the remote server is displayed. In case of any errors you will find the error message from the remote server here. To see the message for a given list entry simply select it in the list.

Click Ok to close the dialog.

Fetching from other Repositories

Fetching from upstream

If you are working with a local branch which has a so-called "upstream configuration", the most convenient way for fetching relies on this upstream configuration.

A local branch is typically created based on a remote tracking branch. Since the remote tracking branch is associated with a remote and this remote contains the information required to access the remote repository, it is possible to automatically create this upstream configuration while creating the local branch (see Branching for more information).

When fetching from upstream, this persisted configuration can be used to fetch automatically without the need to provide further parameters in a dialog.

In order to fetch from upstream, click Team > Fetch from upstream on a project or click Fetch from upstream on a Repository in the Repositories View. There is also an action available in the Git Command Group.

Fetch will be executed immediately after selecting the action. Once finished, a confirmation dialog will be shown displaying information about the fetched data and/or error messages:

Configuring upstream fetch

The upstream fetch can be configured using the "Configure..." button on the confirmation dialog (see above) or by clicking Team > Remote > Configure fetch from upstream... on a project.

A configuration dialog will be shown for configuring the fetch URI and branch mappings (RefSpecs):

The dialog is divided into three main sections. In the upper part, information about the current Repository and the currently checked out branch is shown. The outer Group shows the Fetch Configuration for the remote that is associated with the current branch (in our case, "origin" as shown in the Group text).

The URI field can be used to add/change the fetch URI.

The RefMapping Group allows specification of one or several RefSpecs (see Refspecs) for Fetch.

The "Add" button will open a small wizard that helps in the creation of the RefSpecs. You can also paste a RefSpec from the clipboard into the list.

Clicking on the "Advanced" control will show/hide an "Edit (Advanced...)" button that allows for more complex RefSpec editing similar to the Fetch Wizard.

The buttons in the lower button bar allow you to save your changes and do the fetch immediately, save the changes without fetching, dry-run (fetch without saving the configuration), revert your changes, and Cancel.

Direct Fetch

Fetch Wizard

The most powerful (but also most complex) way is using the Fetch Wizard
Team > Fetch...

If you already configured a Fetch Specification in the Repositories View you may also select it here using the drop-down list under Configured remote repositories. The Finish button will be enabled if the Fetch Specification for this remote is configured properly (i.e. has at least one URI and a ref spec.

Otherwise click Custom URI and enter the URI of the upstream repository you want to fetch changes from.

Fetch Ref Specifications

This is a convenient way to declare that you want to map the branch names in the upstream repository you want to fetch changes from 1:1 to the same local branch names.

Click in the edit field Destination Ref and replace the path segment choose_remote_name with a symbolic name for the upstream repository you are going to fetch from.

The default remote name for the repository your repository has been cloned from is origin. The master of this remote maps by default from refs/heads/master to refs/remotes/origin/master.

If you e.g. want to additionally track branches from Joe's repository in your local repository you would map the branch in his repository refs/heads/* to the following tracking branches refs/remotes/joe/*.

Deselect Force Update if you want to allow fast-forward updates only, select this option if you also want to allow non-fast-forward changes.

Click Force Update all Refs to set the force update option on all specs

Click Remove all specs to remove all specs from the list Specifications for fetch

Click Add all tags spec to map tags tags in the repository you want to fetch from 1:1 to local tags.

If you want to map branches or tags in the upstream repository to local branches in a different way you may define more detailed mapping specifications in the following way

enter source (ref in source repository) and destination ref (tracking branch or tag in local repository) or select already existing branches from the drop-down lists

click Add spec

This will transfer the newly defined mapping to the list Specifications for fetch

Fetch Result Report

Click Finish

A fetch result dialog is shown.

For ref updates the range of commits which have been fetched will be shown in the format <SHA1-from>..<SHA1-to> e.g. d97f5a2e..adfdbfd2 means all commits between d97f5a2e and adfdbfd2 have been fetched.

For refs which didn't exist before in the local repository [new branch] or [new tag] is displayed.

For refs which have been deleted [deleted] is shown.

Pulling New Changes from Upstream Branch

Right-click on a project in the Package Explorer and select Team > Pull or right-click on a repository in the Git Repositories view and select Pull to pull new changes from the upstream branch your local branch is tracking. This also works if resources are selected from more than one repository.

Whenever you create a local branch based on a remote tracking branch EGit can configure a tracking relationship so that subsequent pulls will fetch and then merge or rebase (depending on the configuration of this tracking relationship) the changes from the tracked upstream branch; see Branching for details.

Ad-hoc selection of the upstream branch to pull from is not yet supported by EGit.

if you did no local change or want to discard your local changes, use Team > Reset...

Fetching a change from a Gerrit Code Review Server

If you are working with Gerrit (http://code.google.com/p/gerrit/), EGit allows you to conveniently fetch a change into your local Repository for inspection and/or modification.

Right-click on a project and select Team > Remote > Fetch from Gerrit... or right-click on a Repository node in the Repositories View and select Fetch from Gerrit...

A dialog will appear that lets you select or enter a URI and a change as well as some additional options:

In the URI combo, select or enter the URI that points to your Gerrit instance; the combo will be pre-filled with all URIs defined in any remote of your current Repository; in addition you can type any URI into this field

In the Change field, you must enter the full name of a change; you can either take this value from the Gerrit Web UI, use the content assist described below, or build the name using the following pattern:"refs/changes/" + (last two digits from change number) + / + (change number) + / + (revision number)

In the "Actions to perform after fetch" you can decide what to do after the change has been fetched; you can either create and checkout a branch pointing to the change, create and checkout a tag pointing to the change, or simply checkout the change (thus making HEAD detached); the last option does nothing after fetch, but you will be able to find the commit pertaining to the change at FETCH_HEAD (go to the Repositories View and find FETCH_HEAD under the References node of your Repository, see Inspecting References ).The name for the branch or tag is suggested by the dialog but can be overwritten as needed.Since deletion of tags is currently not supported in EGit, we suggest to use local branches rather than tags for the time being. Since the Repositories view allows to group branches hierarchically using "/" as hierarchy separator, the suggested names can come in very handy when dealing with large numbers of changes.

Instead of the tedious copy-paste or manual entering of the change ID, the dialog also offers a content assist for the change. Simply press "Ctrl+Space" to activate this (consult the tooltip that appears when hovering over the little bulb decorator near the Change field). The Gerrit Server will be contacted and all available changes will be fetched and shown in a content assist dialog:

The list will be filtered with your input in the change field. After selecting the change in the content assist, the Change field will be filled with the correct information.

The Git label decorations can be switched on globally in the Preference Menu (Window > Preferences) under General > Appearance > Label Decorations.

More detailed settings can be done in the Preferences under Team > Git > Label Decorations.

There are two different types of label decorations: text decorations and icon decorations.

Text Decorations

Text decorations appear on the left or right side of the text label. They can be configured on the Preferences dialog under Team > Git > Label Decorations on the tab Text Decorations. For example, the default for a dirty resource is a > on the left side of its name.

These are the default settings:

For files and folders there are the variables "name", "dirty" and "staged". "Dirty" and "staged" are flags; if they are true, the text after the colon is displayed.

For projects there are the additional variables "repository" and "branch". The "repository" variable displays the name of the repository.

The "branch" variable displays the name of the currently checked out branch. If no branch is checked out, the decoration shows the shortened name of the commit (first seven characters followed by ellipsis). If tags and/or remote branches are pointing to this commit, a "best guess" heuristic is applied to also show this information: tags take precedence over remote branches, if several tags apply, the newest one is displayed; if there are several remote branches or tags have no modification date, then alphabetic sorting is applied and the last one is shown. Example: the checked out commit e49f576... refers to tag v.0.7.1 of repository egit:

Icon Decorations

Icon decorations appear on the lower right corner of the icon displayed in front of the label. They can be configured on the Preferences dialog under Team > Git > Label Decorations on the tab Icon Decorations.

These are the default decorations:

dirty (folder) - At least one file below the folder is dirty; that means that it has changes in the working tree that are neither in the index nor in the repository.

tracked - The resource is known to the Git repository and hence under version control.

untracked - The resource is not known to the Git repository and will not be version controlled until it is explicitly added.

ignored - The resource is ignored by the Git team provider. The preference settings under Team > Ignored Resources, "derived" flag and settings from .gitignore files are taken into account.

dirty - The resource has changes in the working tree that are neither in the index nor in the repository.

staged - The resource has changes which have been added to the index. Note that adding changes to the index is currently possible only in the commit dialog via the context menu of a resource.

partially-staged - The resource has changes which are added to the index and additional changes in the working tree that neither reached the index nor have been committed to the repository.

added - The resource has not yet reached any commit in the repository but has been freshly added to the Git repository in order to be tracked in future.

removed - The resource is staged for removal from the Git repository.

conflict - A merge conflict exists for the file.

assume-valid - The resource has the "assume unchanged" flag. This means that Git stops checking the working tree files for possible modifications, so you need to manually unset the bit to tell Git when you change the working tree file. Also see Assume unchanged action.

Commit Dialog

A summary of the status of all modified tracked files is displayed on the commit dialog. By double clicking a file the changes to be committed will be displayed in a compare dialog. As EGit currently always commits the content of the working tree (corresponding to git commit -a on the command line) the compare dialog will compare the working tree with the last commit.

Comparing Content

In daily work you will often want to see the changes between your last commit, the index, and the current working tree. In order to do so, select a Resource (project, folder, or file) in the project explorer or navigator and right-click an action under Compare With.

Compare editor and Git Tree Compare View

If you use any of the submenu actions of Compare With on a single file, a compare editor will be shown, otherwise the Git Tree Compare View will be opened that lets you browse the changes; by double-clicking on a changed file in this view, a compare editor will be opened for this file. An excpetion is the submenu action History..., which opens the History View.

Compare working tree with last commit

The difference between a resource in the current working directory and in the last commit in the current branch can be viewed from the context menu Compare With > HEAD revision. This feature is also available in the Commit dialog. Double clicking on an entry in the Commit dialog opens a compare dialog.

Comparing Working Tree with Index

The differences between the current working tree and the index (based on the currently selected resource) can be viewed from the context menu Compare With > Git Index.

Comparing Working Tree with a branch, a tag or a reference

Select a resource

right-click Compare With > Branch, Tag, or Reference...

select a branch, tag or reference

Comparing Working Tree with Any Commit

From the project explorer:

Select a resource

right-click Compare With > Commit...

select a commit from the commit graph

From the history view (files only):

Select a file in the package explorer

right-click Team > Show in History or Compare With > History...

in the commit graph select a commit

from the context menu select Compare with working tree

this will open a compare dialog showing the changes between the selected commit and the current working tree

Comparing Two Commits

Select a resource in the Package Explorer

click Team > Show in History or Compare With > History... (the latter for files only)

in the commit graph select two commits

right-click Compare with each other

this will open a compare dialog showing the changes between the two selected commits

you can also open a Git Tree Compare view by right-clicking Compare with each other in Tree

Comparing Index with HEAD or Any Other Commit

This feature is not implemented yet.

Comparing with Branches (Synchronize)

The difference between the working tree (including not committed changes) and a branch or tag can be viewed by clicking the dynamic menu Team > Synchronize on a project and selecting the Ref you want to synchronize your working tree against. If the Git repository contains multiple Eclipse projects it is sufficient to select one project, the Synchronization View will also include all other projects.

If you want to synchronize with a Ref not listed in the dynamic menu click Team > Synchronize > Other.... Then in the Synchronize Wizard click into the destination column of the repository you want to synchronize and select the Ref you want to compare against.

When clicking "Include local uncommited changes in comparison" also local, not yet staged changes and the already staged changes will be shown in comparison.

It is also possible to compare multiple repositories at once. In this case in the Synchronize Wizard select for each repository the Ref you want to compare against.

Quickdiff

Instead of using a compare editor you can enable quick diff support and see the changes within the text editor.
This feature can be enabled via the General > Editors > Text Editors > Quick Diff preference page:

The difference annotation will then be displayed on the left hand side of the editor:

If you move your mouse over the annotation you see the content of the version you are comparing to:

Per default, the comparison is against the HEAD. You can determine the version you are comparing to, the so-called quickdiff baseline, from the context menu of a commit in the history view (Show in > History). There are three menu entries:

Quick Diff -> Reset baseline to first parent of HEAD - Compare against the first commit before HEAD.

Quick Diff -> Reset baseline to HEAD - Compare against HEAD.

Quick Diff -> Set as baseline - Compare against the selected commit

Inspecting Commits

To inspect a given commit

from the context menu in package explorer select Team > Show in History

select the commit you want to inspect

View Diff for a Commit

The history view displays the diff in the lower left pane. Selecting a file in the lower right pane scrolls to the corresponding file section of the diff.

Showing the contents of a Commit

The behavior of a double click on a file in the lower right pane depends on the state of the compare mode toggle button. If it's on, a compare editor will be opened which compares the file content in the current commit with the content in the ancestor commit; if it's off, an editor will be opened showing the file content in the current commit.

Committing Changes

Modifications to a project under git version control are persisted in the git history through commits. Starting from the state checked out from the git repository modify your project until you have reached a state you are satisfied with and then commit all these changes into the repository as one single commit. Each commit represents a well defined snapshot of all the files stored in the repository.

Modifying the content

To modify a project which is already shared with Git modify or delete files either within Eclipse or directly in the file system. There is no need to tell Git in advance about these operations. New files which should be version-controlled have to be explicitly put under Git version control :

click Team > Add in the file's context menu

Alternatively you may display untracked files in the Commit dialog and check the Show untracked Files checkbox to select them for inclusion into the commit.

Label decorators e.g. in the Package Explorer View show

untracked files which are not yet under git version control (marked with "?")

a file modified in the working tree but not yet staged for the next commit

a modified file which modifications have been staged for the next commit

a file which has been newly staged for first-time inclusion with the next commit

a file which is not under git version control

Committing

To commit a change click Team > Commit... in the context menu of a resource in the project.

Git tracks all changes made to the entire repository capturing the modifications of all version-controlled files in that repository not regarding if these files reside in the same Eclipse project or not.

Once you have triggered the commit the Commit Dialog will pop-up

Commit Message

In the Commit Dialog you specify the commit message describing the change.

It is good practice to start the message with a short first line summarizing the change followed by a blank line and then the message body. In order to ensure that also git command line tools can format these messages nicely the lines shouldn't be formatted too wide (this is indicated by a grey vertical line).

The commit message text is checked for errors by the Eclipse spell checker. The spell checker can be configured via the Eclipse Preferences > General > Editors > Text Editors > Spelling. Press Ctrl+1 to open quick fixes which may help to fix the spelling errors.

The commit message editor supports content assist for file names shown in Files section of the commit dialog, which can be activated pressing Ctrl-Space.

Footer Tags
In the last paragraph of the commit message optional footer tags may follow :

If there is an entry in a bug tracking system for the change to be committed it is a good idea to add it here as a bug tag

Gerrit Code Review uses the Change-Id: footer to correlate different patchsets of a change evolving during the review process towards the finally accepted patch. To generate a Gerrit Change-Id click Compute Change-Id for Gerrit Code Review; the ID will be generated on commit, until then a null Change-Id is shown as a placeholder. With the egit configuration parameter gerrit.createchangeid set to true the corresponding checkbox in the Commit Dialog is alway preselected. This parameter can be set on repository level, on system level or on user level. See Repository Configuration for more information.

The Signed-off-by: footer is used by many projects to create a formal track record of declarations that the signing author contributed the changes under the project's license and IP rules. This way the IP provenance of a project's evolving code base can be captured on a technical level. See e.g. the Developer Certificate Of Origin used by the Linux kernel project. If the egit preference Insert Signed-off-by in Team > Git > Commit Dialog is set the corresponding checkbox in the Commit Dialog is always preselected.

Additionally this dialog controls which of the changes will be included in the commit. If you clear the checkbox in front of a file, the changes to this file will not be included in the commit. The local file in your eclipse workspace will still contain the modifications giving you the chance to commit these changes with a subsequent commit. This feature is often used to separate modifications done to a set of files into different commits.

One example: Imagine since the last commit you have fixed a bug in A.java and you have added a new method to B.java. These two modifications are logically independent from each other hence you may want to commit them in two independant commits. In this case you initate the commit, deselect B.java from the set of committed files and specify a commit message describing only the bugfix in A.java. After a succesfull first commit you just call commit again and the upcoming dialog will present you the remaining changes in B.java. Now you specify a commit message describing the addition of the method and finish the second commit.

New files you added to the project which have not been explicitly added to version control (see "Modifying the content") will be listed in the commit dialog if you select the checkbox "Show untracked Files". If you select the checkbox in front of these files in the list they will be added to the repository and committed once you press the commit button. Files which are excluded by the team ignore list or a .gitignore file or which are derived (e.g. the bin folder in java projects) will not be shown here. If you have no other changes in your repository than such untracked files the checkbox Show untracked Files is selected by default.

Amending Commits

If you recognize that you missed something when committing a change you may fix this : open the commit dialog again and specify that the current commit shall "amend" the previous commit in the current branch. The new commit will then replace the previous one. This feature is often used to correct wrong commits before they are published to other repositories.

Note: do not amend commits if they have already been published to a shared repository since this may disturb others if they already based their changes on the published change.

Amend example:Imagine you have committed a change to a file containing a typo

After committing the change you detect a typo. In order to correct this typo and the corresponding commit you just fix the typo in the source file

then open the Commit Dialog again and select the option Amend previous commit.

The commit message of your previous commit (the one you want to replace) is filled into the "Commit Message" field. This gives you the chance not only to correct errors in the content of the version-controlled files but to also correct errors (e.g. typos) in the commit message describing your change.

As an alternative to amending you could just commit the corrected version as a subsequent commit. But the first commit containing the typo is of no use to anybody and in order not to clutter the history of your project with unneeded commits you may decide to amend the commit.

Be aware that amending commits which are already published to other repositories may cause trouble. Once you have pushed a commit to a remote repository or your local repository was cloned by somebody else you should be very careful whith amending commits. In this case publishing a second commit which corrects the first one is probably a better solution. Otherwise inform all others that you amended a published commit so that they can react accordingly.

Reverting Changes

Reverting changes in the working tree

Replace with File in Git Index

Changes which are not yet committed and not yet staged can be reverted for a set of selected files.
Select the file(s) in the Package Explorer or an analogous view and click Replace With > File in Git Index.

Replace with HEAD

This feature is currently not available on single file level. You can use Reset to with option hard to forcefully reset the entire working tree of your repository back to the state of the HEAD commit (See "Resetting your current HEAD" below). This operation will revert all changes in the working tree and the index. You can't do it on a selected set of files using EGit yet.

Revert using quickdiff

The quickddiff feature can be used to revert individual changes to a file. You can revert by line, block (se range of changes lines) or selection. Select all text and then Revert selection to revert a whole file.

Reverting changes introduced by a specific commit

Changes which are introduced by a given commit can be reverted by an automatically created new commit on top of the currently checked out commit. The commit which is to be reverted does not have to be checked out for that.

Select the commit in the History View, open the context menu and select Revert Commit. This reverts the changes that the selected commit introduces by creating a new commit on top of the currently checked out commit.

Resetting your current HEAD

Git offers the possibility to reset the HEAD of the current branch to any other commit. It optionally resets the index and the working tree to match that commit. Note that this action affects all files and folders in the entire repository.

You have the option to do a hard reset, a mixed reset and a soft reset.

soft - the HEAD points now to the new commit, the index and the working tree are unchanged

mixed - the HEAD points now to the new commit, the index is updated, the working tree is unchanged

hard - the HEAD points now to the new commit, the index and the working tree are updated

Reset to specific branch or tag

Select Team -> Reset... on a project. This opens a dialog where you can select a branch or a tag.

Reset to a specific commit

Select a commit in the History view and open the context menu. Here you find the entries Hard reset, Mixed reset and Soft reset.

Revert all local and staged changes

This can be done as a special case of reset. If you reset to the current HEAD (normally the last commit on your branch) with the option hard you overwrite the working tree and the index with the content of the HEAD. You can do this in three ways:

Select Team > Reset... on a project. In the dialog select HEAD or your current branch and switch the radio button to hard.

Right click and select Reset... on any branch or tag in the Repositories view. This opens a dialog which lets you decide on the reset type. Choose hard here.

Open the context menu on the HEAD commit in the history view and select Hard Reset.

Branching

Checking out an existing Branch

From the team menu on a project node:

Select Team > Switch To... and select a branch name from the list

If there are too many branches the list does not show all of them. In this case

Select Team > Switch To... > Other...

On the dialog, select a branch, a tag or a Reference

Click Ok

From the Git Repositories View

Select Checkout on a branch node

or

Double Click on a branch node

From the History View

Select Checkout on a commit which has a branch label

If more than one branch point to the commit a dialog will let you decide which branch to check out.

Creating a New Local Branch

This is always done with the Branch Creation dialog. The newly created branch can optionally be checked out by selecting a check box on the dialog.

From the team menu on a project node, based on a branch, a tag or a Reference:

Deleting Branch

Branch Creation Dialog

There are several actions available to create a local branch. All these actions use the Branch Creation dialog:

The combo in the upper part allows to select the branch or commit the new branch shall be based on. Typically, this is a remote tracking branch, but it could be any branch or commit in the repository.

The "Pull Strategy" group allows to override the default setup for the "upstream configuration" which is helpful when fetching and pushing, but particularly when pulling. Depending on the selected option the following configuration can be chosen:

Rebase: When pulling, new changes will be fetched from upstream and the remote tracking branch will be updated. Then the current local branch will be rebased onto the updated remote tracking branch

Merge: When pulling, the changes will be fetched from upstream and the remote tracking branch will be updated. Then the current local branch will be merged with the new changes. This is the default if the new branch is based on a remote tracking branch (but this default may be overriden by specific repository configuration)

None: When pulling, no specific upstream configuration will be done for the new branch; however, if a default remote exists (a remote with name "origin", pull will try to use the configuration of this remote; this is the default if the new branch is not based on a remote tracking branch

EGit also supports the git configuration parameter branch.autosetuprebase, set it to always if you want to use the rebase pull strategy by default. If you set this in the repository configuration this is used for all local branches created based on a remote tracking branch in this repository, if you set it in your user configuration it will be used for all your repositories.

In the lower part, you can decide whether the new branch shall be checked out immediately.

Merging

A merge incorporates changes from named commits (since the time their histories diverged from the current branch) into the current branch.

Merging a branch or a tag into the current branch

You have two places where you can trigger the merge:

from the team menu

from the Git Repositories View

Starting merge from the team menu

In the Package Explorer or Navigator, open the context menu on a project node.
Select Team > Merge...

Now the merge dialog opens:

On the dialog, select a branch or a tag you want to merge with your current branch.

Starting merge from the Git Repositories View

You can trigger a merge from any branch and tag node and from the repository node if you have checked out a local branch. See Merging a Branch or a Tag for further details.

Possible merge results

After pressing the Merge button, the following scenarios can occur:

Already up to date: Your current branch points to a commit that has the selected branch or tag as predecessor. In this case nothing is changed.

Fast-forward: Your current branch points to a commit that is a predecessor of the selected branch or tag. In this case your branch is moved and points to the selected branch or tag; this new HEAD is checked out to the working tree. Fast-forward is very common when working with remote repositories: When a remote tracking branch is updated, the merge with the corresponding branch generally is a fast-forward. You can perform a pull by fetching the remote branch (e.g. origin/master) and merging it into the corresponding local branch (e.g. master).

Real merge: When neither of the conditions above apply egit triggers a merge of the commits. There are two possible outcomes: If no conflicts occur the current branch will point to a newly created merge commit; if conflicts occur the conflicting files will be marked with label decorators (see Resolving a merge conflict for further actions in case of merge conflicts).

Merge Result dialog

The result of a merge is summarized in a dialog:

On the first line you see the result of the merge. The possible results are "Already-up-to-date", "Fast-forward", "Merged", "Conflicting" or "Failed". A possible reason for "Failed" may be that there are conflicting changes in the working directory.

On the second line you see the new HEAD commit in case of a successful merge (Already-up-to-date, Fast-forward or Merged).

Using Merge Tool

select the merge mode Use HEAD (the last local version) of conflicting files" and click OK

the merge editor opens showing the working tree version in the left pane and the version to be merged in the right pane

edit the working tree version until you are happy with it

Team > Add the merged resource to mark the conflict as resolved

commit the merge commit via Team > Commit

Manual conflict resolution

To resolve a conflict you have to do the following steps:

Navigate to the conflicting resource

Edit the content of the conflicting resource

Tell EGit that the conflict is resolved with Team > Add

Commit the conflict resolution with Team > Commit

Finding conflicting files

A repository which contains conflicting files has the textual label decorator "|Conflicts" attached to the repository name. Conflicting resources and folders containing such conflicting resources get a conflict label decoration.

Note that this step is not mandatory. EGit does not check the content to decide if a conflict is resolved. The next step is the relevant one.

Adding conflict resolution to the git index

Once you are finished with editing a file select Team > Add to add the conflict resolution to the git index. You can do it on a folder or the whole project to resolve all conflicts at once.

When you have resolved all conflicts the textual repository label decoration changes to "Merged". There are no conflict markers anymore.

Committing a merge

When the repository is in state "Merged" (as is indicated with the textual label decorator "|Conflicts" attached to the repository name) the merge can finally be committed.

Select Team > Commit... anywhere in the navigation tree. The commit dialog opens with a slightly different look compared to a normal commit:

The Commit message area is prefilled with a standard merge commit message.

It is not possible to amend a previous commit.

It is not possible to add untracked files.

it is not possible to uncheck the checkboxes. This guarantees that all resolved conflicts are committed.

After pressing the "Commit" Button the merge is completed.

Aborting Merge

If a merge resulted in conflicts you can abort the merge with a hard reset to the current branch. This can be done in state "Conflicts" and in state "Merged", i.e. before and after you have resolved the conflicts.

Rebasing

Rebase Introduction

Rebase applies a chain of commits onto a given commit. A typical scenario is the development of some feature on a "topic" branch which was created from a "master" branch at some point in time. When "master" is updated with changes e.g. from other developers while "topic" is still under development, it may become necessary to incorporate these changes into "topic".

Let's assume we start development on "topic" by creating the "topic" branch from master. At this point, both "master" and "topic" point to commit "E". When the first commit ("A") is added to "topic", the commit history of the repository looks like this:

A topic
/
D---E master

Now, let's assume that there were some more commits on "topic" and as well some more commits on "master" (for example, "master" may track some remote repository and there were some changes in that remote repository that have been pulled into "master"):

A---B---C topic
/
D---E---F---G master

Now, in order to incorporate the changes in "master" into "topic", a Rebase of "topic" onto "master" would produce

A'--B'--C' topic
/
D---E---F---G master

Technically, the sequence of commits that are contained in "topic" but not in "master" are applied (that is, cherry-picked) on top of "master" one by one.

Note that the commits A, B, C are neither lost nor changed, instead a new chain of commits A', B', C' with the same changes and commit messages as the original commits (but different commit IDs) will be created. The old commits A, B, C are still around in the object database but not visible anymore as they are no longer reachable from any branch. A', B', C' are different from the old ones as they now also contain changes F and G.

Rebase, A Simple Example

Let's have a look at some simple example: we have a text file "FamousWords.txt" which initially might have some content like

Chapter 1
Once upon a time...
Chapter 2
To be or not to be

Now, in "topic", two commits are created, the first one adding a French translation to Chapter 2, and another one adding a German translation:

After first change in "topic":

Chapter 1
Once upon a time...
Chapter 2
To be or not to be
Être ou ne pas être

After second change in "topic":

Chapter 1
Once upon a time...
Chapter 2
To be or not to be
Être ou ne pas être
Sein oder nicht sein

At the same time, the file was changed in "master" by adding two commits adding French and German translations to Chapter 1:

Chapter 1
Once upon a time...
Il était une fois
Es war einmal
Chapter 2
To be or not to be

The commit history looks like this:

Now, if "topic" is rebased onto "master", the two changes in topic are applied in the same sequence as they were applied during the evolution of "topic".

The result is a merged version of "FamousWords.txt":

Chapter 1
Once upon a time...
Il était une fois
Es war einmal
Chapter 2
To be or not to be
Être ou ne pas être
Sein oder nicht sein

and a commit history with the commit history of "topic" on top of the current "master":

The Real World: Rebase Conflicts

Up to now, we have assumed that the changes in "topic" can be auto-merged into "master". In the real world, however, it may happend that you encounter conflicts during rebase. Now, if a commit that is to be cherry-picked contains changes that conflict with changes in "master", the rebase operation is interrupted after applying the conflicting change; the conflicts are visualized in the usual way (with conflict markers) and the user gets a chance to decide whether to

resolve these conflicts manually,

skip the current commit, or

abort the rebase completely

If Resolve Conflicts is chosen, and the conflicts have been resolved manually, the changes must be "Added", and then rebase can be resumed, i.e. the next commit in the chain will be applied.

If Skip was chosen, the conflicting changes will be reverted and the next commit in the chain will be applied.

If Abort was chosen, the rebase operation will be completely rolled back, returning the Repository into its original state before the rebase was started.
This process is repeated until the last commit was applied successfully or skipped. Finally, the "topic" branch will be changed to point to the last commit.

To understand "Skip" better, let's look back to the introduction above. If we assume that commit "B" causes some conflicts with the current "master", the user might decide to simply skip "B"; the new commit history after the rebase would then look like this:

A'--C' topic
/
D---E---F---G master

Starting Rebase

Rebase is available in the Git Repositories View. On Repository nodes, Rebase... opens a dialog asking the user to select a branch that is not checked out; the currently checked out branch will then be rebased onto the selected branch. On "Branch" nodes (both Local and Remote Tracking branches, but not on the currently checked out branch), Rebase immediately rebases the currently checked out branch onto the selected branch:

Rebase Confirmation Dialog

If Rebase was successful, a confirmation dialog will be displayed; this dialog can be suppressed by ticking a checkbox; a preference on the Git preference page allows to make the dialogs appear again. If the dialog is suppressed, an "Information" message is written to the Eclipse log instead.

Rebase Conflicts

If a conflict occurs during rebase, a dialog is shown giving some information about the commit that caused the conflict. By selecting a radio button, you can decide whether to

Start the Merge Tool to resolve the conflicts manually

Skip the current commit

Abort the rebase altogether

Do nothing (return to the workbench), this is equivalent to hitting "Escape":

Unless "Skip" or "Abort" was chosen in the dialog, the conflicts must be resolved manually by editing the conflicting files. When done with editing, the files must be declared as being resolved by "Adding" them to the index.

After all conflicts have been resolved, Rebase can be resumed by right-clicking on the Repository node in the Git Repositories View and selecting Rebase > Continue.

The "Skip" and "Abort" options are also available from the Git Repositories View by right-clicking on the Repository node and selecting Rebase > Skip and Rebase > Abort, respectively.

The Merge Tool can also be started from the corresponding entry in the Team menu.

Aborting Rebase

As long as the Repository is in "Rebasing" state, the user can always abort the rebase in the Git Repositories View using the menu action "Rebase > Abort" which is available on the Repository node.

Rebase Limitation

The current EGit rebase implementation is not yet able to handle all possible version graphs. If the graph is too complicated rebase will abort with an error message. As a workaround until these more complex graphs are also supported by EGit's rebase you may instead use native git from the command line.

Cherry Picking

Cherry-pick Introduction

A given commit C on branch stable-1.0 contains a set of changes you would like to integrate in your current development on branch master.

A--B--C--D stable-1.0
/
D---E---F---G master HEAD

Cherry-pick the commit C to create a new commit C' on top of the head commit of the currently checked out branch master. C' will then contain the changes performed in C applied onto the HEAD of the currently checked out branch master.

A--B--C--D stable-1.0
/
D---E---F---G--C' master HEAD

Cherry-pick Example

You are currently working on branch "feature2" (HEAD). There is a commit "feature 1" in another branch.
You want to integrate the changes performed by commit "feature 1" into your current development on branch "feature 2".

In the History View select commit "feature 1" and click Cherry-pick:

As result you get a new commit "feature 1" at the tip of your current branch "feature" containing the changes of "feature 1":

Cherry-picking can encounter conflicts. In this case conflict markers are rendered into the affected sources:

Creating a Tag

Tags can also be created in the history view: select a commit and execute Create Tag... in the context menu. The tag will be created on the selected commit:

Replacing an Existing Tag

What to do if you tagged the wrong commit or ended up with some sort of typo ?

If you didn't yet push this out just replace the tag and you are done.

If it's already published you shouldn't replace the tag but use a new name since otherwise you have to tell everybody who got the old tag to replace it manually with your updated one. This is because, Git does not (and it should not) change tags behind users back. So if somebody already got the old tag, doing a git pull on your tree shouldn't just make them overwrite the old one.

So if your old tag wasn't yet pushed you may correct it in the following way :

Select Team > Tag... from the project context menu.

Select the tag you want to replace from the list of existing tags

or start typing any part of the tag you look for into the Tag Name field, this will filter the list of existing tags to those tags which contain the string you are typing, then select the tag you want to replace

Mark the checkbox Force replace existing tag

Change the tag and press OK

Deletion of tags

In order to delete a tag, select the tag to be deleted and click Delete Tag.

Note: it's a bad practice to delete tags which have already been published on a public server, some Git servers even disallow tag deletion to ensure traceability for releases which are usually tagged. Also see the section "On re-tagging" in the Git reference documentation of the tag command.

Light-weight and Signed Tags

Light-weight tags are shown in the Repositories View as well as in the Create Tag dialog, but can not be edited.
Tags are shown with a blue icon in the Repositories View, lightweight tags are decorated with a dark blue "L".

In the History View, tags are shown as yellow labels.

Signed tags are not yet supported by EGit, use command line git tag or git tag -s instead.

Patches

Creating Patches

"A patch is a piece of software designed to fix problems with, or update a computer program or its supporting data" (wikipedia). A patch file contains a description of changes of a set of resources which can be automatically applied to another eclipse workspace or git repository.

The patch formats used by eclipse (Team > Apply Patch) and by git (git apply or git am on the command line) are different. It is possible to create both types of a patch in EGit.

Create a Patch from a Commit

This is the most common use case for a distributed versioning system. A developer commits a change on a local feature or bugfix branch and wants to export this change into a patch file.

It can be done from the history view:

The patch file will contain the difference between the commit and its parent in the history view. Note that the filter of the history view applies also for patch creation.

Patch Wizard

The Wizard consists of two pages. Page one lets you select the location of the patch:

The name of the patch file is created from the first line of the commit message.

On the second page you can change the patch format.

Currently there is one check box: Export in git patch format.

If you do not check it (this is the default) the patch can be applied with the eclipse Apply Patch... wizard. The paths are relative to the eclipse projects and do not contain prefixes (like git format-patch --no-prefix on the git command line).

If you check it the patch will look like the result of git format-patch --no-stat on the git command line.

Binary diffs are currently not produced.

Applying Patches

Currently EGit isn't able to apply patches in git format. It is possible to apply patches using the standard Eclipse (unified diff) format using Team > Apply Patch.... Git patches may contain non-standard extensions for rename and binary diffs. The current version of EGit does not generate these extensions.

Managing Repositories

The "Git Repositories View" is the primary UI element to facilitate working with multiple Repositories simultaneously (i.e. within one Eclipse Workspace).

This view can be opened using the menu path Windows > Show View > Other... > Git > Git Repositories

It is also part of the "Git Repository Exploring" perspective available using menu path Window > Open Perspective > Other... > Git Repository Exploring

If you already have projects in your workspace which are shared with a Git Repository, you can use Team > Show in Repositories View

on any resource to open the view.

Adding Repositories to the Git Repositories View

Initially, the Git Repositories View is empty. In order to add Repositories to it, there are several options:

Adding a Repository from the Local File System manually

Cloning a Repository and having the cloned Repository added to the view automatically

Creating a Repository on the Local File System

Adding a Repository by pasting a Git Repository path to the view

Adding a Repository manually

You can add a Repository from your local file system to the Git Repositories View without cloning it. This can be helpful if you are setting up a new Eclipse workspace and want to re-use your Git Repositories. Use the Add an existing Git Repository button from the view's toolbar:

A dialog will appear prompting you for a directory of your local file system. After selecting the correct directory, you can hit the Search button to see a list of Git Repositories in this directory. You can then select some or all found Repositories and add them to the view using OK:

Cloning a Repository

In order to clone a Repository, refer to Cloning remote Repositories. After a successful clone operation, the newly cloned Repository should appear in the Git Repositories View automatically.

You can also use the Clone a Git Repository button from the view's toolbar to start the Clone wizard:

Creating a Repository

You can create a new, empty repository on the local file system. This is useful if you later on want to create one or more new projects below this repository. Another usecase is to create a new bare repository where you can push to. Use the Create a new Git Repository button from the view's toolbar:

A dialog will appear which lets you choose a directory:

If you select the checkbox Create as Bare Repository the new repository will not have a working directory. You then can only add content by pushing changes from another repository.

Adding a Repository using Copy and Paste

As a shortcut, it is also possible to paste the local file system path of a Git repository from the clipboard into this view. In order to do so, copy the path of a Git repository (the full path of its .git folder) to the clipboard, then open the context menu on the view panel:

or click Edit > Paste from the main menu (or the corresponding keyboard shortcut). If the clipboard content is not suitable, an error popup will be displayed, otherwise the added Repository should appear automatically.

After the view has been populated with some repositories, it should look like this:

Removing Repositories

Removing a Repository from the Repositories View

In order to remove a repository from the Repositories View select a repository and click "Remove Repository"

Deleting a Repository

In order to delete a repository, select it in the Repositories View and click "Delete Repository".

Then confirm that you want to delete the repository

and decide if you want to delete projects contained in the repository from the Eclipse workspace.

Structure of the Git Repositories View

The following screenshot shows the topmost two levels of the Git Repositories View:

The root node represents the Repository itself. The node text indicates the name of the Repository and its location in the local file system. The "Branches" and "Tags" nodes allow browsing and manipulation of tags and branches. The "References" node lists other references which are not branches or tags, most notably the "HEAD" and "FETCH_HEAD" symbolic references (see Git References).

The "Working Directory" node displays the location and structure of the working directory on the local file system (only in case of a development, or non-bare Repository, for bare Repositories, this node is always a leaf).

Finally, the "Remotes" node allows browsing and manipulating the remote configurations used for Fetch and Push.

Functions of the Git Repositories View

Project Import

In order to work with the contents of a Git Repository, its files and folders must be imported into the Eclipse workspace in the form of projects. While the Git Clone wizard allows to do such imports directly after cloning, the Git Repositories View allows to trigger project imports independently of the clone operation.

The "Import Projects..." context menu is available on the "Repository" node as well as on any "Folder" node within the "Working Directory" node and the "Working Directory" node itself:

The rationale for offering the Import Projects... action on several nodes is that some of the wizards used for importing projects can take the file system directory into account, for example the Import Existing Projects wizard. If the import is started from the "Repository" or the "Working Directory" node, the working directory of the repository is set as context, otherwise the directory corresponding to the currently selected "Folder" node.

Branch and Tag Support

The "Branches" node allows to create, browse, checkout and delete local and remote branches. The "Tags" node allows to browse and check out tags. Both the "Branches" node and the "Tags" node allow to merge the branch or tag into the currently checked out branch and also to synchronize with the currently checked out branch.

For better readability, branches are organized in two sub-nodes for local and remote branches, respectively, and only the shortened names are displayed, e.g. instead of "refs/heads/master" you would find an entry "master" under the "Local Branches" node, instead of "refs/remotes/origin/master" the shortened name "origin/master" is displayed under the "Remote Branches" node. Similarly, tag names are shortened by omitting the "refs/tags/" prefix:

Check-out of Branches and Tags

Branches and tags can be checked out by either double-clicking on the respective node or by selecting the corresponding context menu entry.

Creation and Deletion of Branches

Local branches can be created using the Branch Creation Dialog. The wizard is opened by right-clicking on the "Branches", the "Local Branches" on any "Branch" and "Tag" node).

Branch deletion is done using the corresponding context menu entry.

Rebasing

You can trigger rebasing of the currently checked-out branch onto another branch by right-clicking Rebase on any (local or remote tracking) branch node.

Merging a Branch or a Tag

You can trigger a merge from any branch and tag node and from the repository node if you have checked out a local branch. See Merging for further details of the merging features.

When you select any branch node other than the currently checked out branch or any tag node, use Merge to directly trigger a merge into the currently checked out branch.

Synchronizing with a Branch or a Tag

You can perform a comparison of the changes in your HEAD with the changes done in any other branch or tag. Right click and select Synchronize... on any branch or tag. Then the eclipse synchronize view opens which contains a representation of the changes that are contained in your HEAD but not on the other branch or tag (outgoing change) or vice versa (incoming change). Please refer to the documentation of the synchronize feature for further details.

Determining the Checked-out Branch

There are two ways to determine which branch or tag is currently checked out: the checked out branch/tag node is decorated with a little check mark and the "HEAD" entry under the "Symbolic References" node shows the (full) name of the checked out branch:

Resetting to a Branch or a Tag

Right click and select Reset... on any branch or tag. This opens a dialog which lets you decide on the reset type. See Resetting you current HEAD for further details.

"Detached" HEAD

If HEAD is "detached", i.e. is not pointing to the tip of a local branch but to a commit or tag, then none or several "checked-out" markers may appear in the tree, since any number of remote branch or tags may point to the currently checked out commit. The state you are in while your HEAD is detached is not recorded by any branch (which is natural --- you are not on any branch).

Inspecting References

The References node displays some References other than branches and tags (the list is dynamic and depends on the current state of the Repository):

If the Reference is symbolic, i.e. points to another Reference, the name of the target reference is shown, followed by the object ID of the reference's target. If the Reference is not symbolic, only the object ID is shown.

In the example above, HEAD is a symbolic Reference pointing to branch "refs/heads/master" (i.e. branch "master" is checked out", while FETCH_HEAD points directly to commit 226a7f... .

The following actions are available on right-clicking on a Reference: Checkout (unless the Reference is already checked out) and Create Branch'...' .

Browsing the Working Directory

The "Working Directory" node visualizes the local file system structure of the Git Repository. It is also possible to open a text editor on the files:

Alternatively, files can be opened by dragging them from the Working Directory to the Editor Area.

Also, on all file and folder nodes as well as on the "Repository" node, an option is offered to copy the (file-system specific) path to the clipboard. This is sometimes useful when the path is needed, for example to open a directory using a file browser or to copy and paste Repositories between view instances (see above about how to add Repositories to the view). The Copy to Clipboard action is also available using Edit > Copy (or the corresponding keyboard shortcut).

Repository Configuration

Integration with the generic "Properties" view in Eclipse allows to view and edit the Git Configuration (global and repository-specific configuration). If the "Properties" view is open, it is updated automatically when a "Repository" node is selected. With a drop down box (left red box in the screen shot) you can switch between the display of the Repository Configuration, the Global Configuration and a view which aggregates both. If the view displays the Repository Configuration or the Global Configuration you can open an editor dialog with the Edit button (right red box in the screen shot). The editor dialog has the same functionality as the preference page Team > Git > Configuration.

In the Git Repositories view, there is a Properties action in the context menu, which will open a configuration dialog allowing to edit the Repository Configuration. Here, key value pairs can be added, changed or deleted. The Open button allows to open the Repository Configuration file in a text editor.

Remote Repositories

The "Remotes" node allows for browsing and editing Remote configurations. Each Remote configuration has a name and either a Push Specification, a Fetch Specification, or both. If a "Remote Configuration" node or any of its children is selected, the Properties view will show a summary of the Remote configuration. In this example: there is a Remote configuration named "origin" which only has a Fetch Specification, but no Push Specification:

Menu actions are provided to add, configure, and remove Remote configurations and Fetch and Push Specifications.

Direct Fetch and Push Support

It is possible to execute fetch and push directly (i.e. without a wizard) on the respective "Fetch" and "Push" nodes:

Note that the fetch or push operation will be executed immediately in an asynchronous job; on completion you will get a confirmation pop-up displaying the fetch result.

The "Fetch" node contains a so called fetch specification and the "Push" node contains a so called push specification.

A default fetch specification is created when the repository is cloned. You can edit the fetch specification with the menu entry Configure Fetch.... This opens a wizard. On the first page you can edit the Fetch URI. Ob the second page you can determine the fetch ref specifications, see Fetch Ref Specifications.

You can create or edit a push specification with the menu entry Configure Push.... This opens a wizard. On the first page you can edit the Push URIs. If a fetch is specified the fetch URI is automatically included into the push specification and no additional Push URI is needed. On the second page you can determine the push ref specifications, see Push Ref Specifications.

Adding a Remote Configuration

This is done using a context menu action on the "Remotes" node. A wizard is started asking for the name of the new configuration and whether to configure Fetch, Push, or both:

If the Configure Fetch checkbox was selected, the next wizard page will ask for the URI of the Repository to fetch from:

Click Change... to open a dialog that allows you to select a URI. The next step is to define the Remote Specification for the fetch URI. See Fetch Ref Specifications about the details.

If the Configure Push checkbox was selected, the next wizard page will ask for the URIs of the repositories to push to. This is actually a list, as you can push to multiple repositories at once. Click Add.... to add URIs to the list using the same dialog as above. You can remove URIs by marking them in the list and hitting Remove. This step is completely optional if there is already a fetch URI defined. In this case, the fetch URI will also be used for push. If at least one push URI is defined in this steps, it will override the fetch URI. In this example, there is already a fetch URI, so the Next button is enabled, even though there is no Push URI in the list:

The next step is to define the Remote Specification for the push URIs. See Push Ref Specifications about the details.

Upon completion, the new Remote configuration will be visible:

Changing Remote Configurations

It is also possible to add, remove, or change Fetch/Push Specifications for an existing Remote configuration using the context menu.

Refresh

The view is auto-refreshed periodically. The Refresh button in the toolbar allows to trigger an immediate refresh:

Link with Selection

If the Link with selection toggle is enabled, the file or folder corresponding to the current workbench selection will be displayed automatically:

Link with Editor

If the Link with editor toggle is enabled, the file or folder corresponding to the currently active editor will be displayed automatically:

Hierarchical Branch Layout

If the Hierarchical Branch Layout toggle is enabled, branches will be shown in a hierarchical layout using slash (/) as hierarchy separator:

This can be helpful for organizing large numbers of branches.

Bare Repositories

"Bare" Git Repositories (as opposed to "development" or "standard" Repositories) have no working directory by definition, so all actions related to the working directory (check-out, project import, browsing the working directory) are not available for such Repositories. The "Bare-ness" of a Repository is visualized on the "Working Directory" node, which is always a leaf:

Bare repositories are only changed by pushing changes to them.

Removing Repositories from the Git Repositories View

This is offered as a menu action on the "Repository" node. Note that this does not delete the Repository, but just removes the node from the view. If there are projects in the workspace which are located in the working directory of the Repository, the user will be prompted to confirm deletion of these projects from the Eclipse workspace.

Showing Repository in Related Views

Show in History

The command Show in > History will open the History View showing all changes in the selected repository.

Show in Reflog

The command Show in > Reflog will open the Git Reflog view showing the Git reflog of the selected repository.

Show in Properties

The command Show in > Properties will open the Properties view showing the properties of the selected repository.

Working with Tasks

Since EGit 0.11 a first integration with Mylyn is available to support working with task repositories.

Installation

You need to install the feature "EGit Mylyn" to use the EGit Mylyn integration. This requires also Mylyn to be installed.

Searching for commits

EGit supports searching for commits.

Git Search page

Commits can be searched from the Git Search tab in the standard Eclipse Search dialog.

This dialog supports searching for text or patterns present in the different fields of a Git commit such as the message, author line, committer line, and the SHA-1 ids of the commit, its parent(s), and the tree associated with it.

Browsing Search Results

Commit search results are displayed in the standard Eclipse Search view. Results are grouped by repository when in Tree mode. Double-clicking a commit from the Search view will open it in the commit viewer.

Launching Git Search

The Git Search page can be opened by selecting the Git Search option from the Search drop-down on the Eclipse toolbar.

Open commit dialog

EGit 1.0 has an Open Git Commit dialog similar to the Mylyn Open Task and core Open Resource dialogs. The dialog searches every configured Git repository for the branch, tag, or commit SHA-1 entered into the filter box and displays the matching commits.

The dialog can be opened by selecting the Open Git Commit button on the Eclipse navigation toolbar.

Finding the author of each line in a file

Selecting the Team > Show Annotations action on file selections will open the editor and display an annotation ruler with commit and author information for each line in a file. Hovering over the ruler will display a pop-up showing the commit id, author, committer, and the commit message.

The look and feel of the blame annotation editor ruler can be configured from the Revisions sub-menu available from the ruler context-menu.

Selecting the SHA-1 hyperlink from the popup will open the commit in the commit viewer.

Reference

Menus

Project Context Menu

On project nodes in navigation views (Navigator, Package Explorer etc.) the following
Git actions are available for projects shared with the Git team provider:

main project menu

"Remote" sub-menu

"Switch To" sub-menu

"Advanced" sub-menu

Resource Context Menu

On resource nodes (files and folders) in navigation views the following Git actions are available for projects shared with the Git team provider:

Repositories View Menus

In the Repositories View the menu depends on the node type which is selected

Menu on repository nodes:

Menu on branch nodes:

Menu on tag nodes:

Menu on Reference nodes:

Menu on Fetch Configuration nodes:

Menu on Push Configuration nodes:

Menu on Working Tree nodes:

History View Menus

Menu on entries in the History View's commit list

Git Workbench Toolbar and Git Workbench Menu

In order to ease use of the most frequently used Git actions the Git Command Group can be activated to show a Git Workbench Toolbar and/or Menu

right-click in the workbench toolbar area and click Customize perspective...

in the tab Command Groups Availability click Git, this will enable both the Git workbench toolbar and menu

in the tabs Toolbar Visibility and Menu Visibility you may configure which actions should appear in the Git Workbench toolbar and menu

Assume unchanged - Resources can be flagged "assume unchanged". This means that Git stops checking the working tree files for possible modifications, so you need to manually unset the bit to tell Git when you change the working tree file. This setting can be switched on with the menu action Team > Assume unchanged and switched back with the menu action Team > No Assume unchanged.

Git Repositories View

History View

Overview

The History View for Resources under Git version control is a commit-centric view of the resources in a given Repository. It can be used to perform the following tasks:

Inspecting the change history of a given File under Git version control (viewing and comparing the versions of such a File in the Repository)

Search for a certain commit using different search criteria

Check-out of a certain commit

Creation of branches and tags based on a certain commit

Creation of patches based on the changes in a certain commit

Resetting the complete Repository to a certain commit

Setting and resetting of the quickdiff baseline to a certain commit

Opening the History View

The History view can be opened by

Right-clicking Show In > History View on any resource under Git version control in the explorer (not available in all Perspectives)

Right-clicking Team > Show in History on any resource under Git version control in the explorer

Clicking Window > Show View > Other..., then Team > History

Once the view is open, you can activate the Link with Selection button to keep the input of the view in sync with the selection in the explorer automatically.

Organization of the History View

The History view is organized in several panes:

The upper pane is the Commit Graph displaying the commit log (or commit history) in reverse chronological order (newest commit on top). Below the commit graph, there are by default two panes: on the left side, the Revision Comment area, which shows the commit message and a textual Diff of the file or files in the commit, and on the right side, the Revision Detail area, which shows a table of the files that were changed by the commit.

The first column of this table describes the nature of the change for each file:

ADD the file was added by the commit

MODIFY the file was modified by the commit

DELETE the file was deleted by the commit

The content of the lower panes depends on the selection in the upper pane and is updated automatically when this selection changes.

Both lower panes can be switched on and and off separately by right-clicking anywhere in the upper pane and selecting Show Revision Comment and Show Revision Details, respectively.

Above the Commit Graph, the current input is visualized. The input is always a workspace resource, either a project, a folder, or a file. After the type of the input, the path is shown, followed by the name of the Repository containing the resource in square brackets.

Using the History View

Inspecting the Commit Graph

The Commit Graph area is the main part of the History View. By default, it shows the currently checked out commit and all its ancestors, i.e. the first entry in the list is the checked out commit.
The following picture is used to explain some of the features of the History View:

Each line in the Commit Graph corresponds to a commit. Branches, tags and HEAD are visualized as follows:

The tips of local branches are shown as green rectangles

The tips of remote branches are shown as grey rectangles

The local HEAD is shown as a white rectangle

Tags are shown as yellow rectangles

(our example doesn't have remote branches).

The line on the left side is the actual commit graph, which shows the parent-child relation of the commits in the list (each commit has at least one parent, except for the very first commit in a Repository).
There can be forks, which correspond to a branch operation, and joins, which correspond to a merge operation. In our example, there was a branch "experimental" created after the commit with branch "beforeSplit", and the same file was changed both in the "master" and in the "experimental" branch. The last commit is a merge commit where the content of the "experimental" branch was merged with the "master" branch.

The exact change can be inspected by marking a commit and looking at the Revision Comment area. When scrolling down in the Revision Comment area, a textual diff for the changes will be visible, in our example it says that the content of Project1/f1/file1.txt was changed from "modified" to "modified in master". When selecting the next commit (which corresponds to the "experimental" branch), a similar diff would be displayed, saying that the content of that file was changed from "modified" to "modified in experimental". The newest commit is the result of merging "experimental" into "master". Accordingly, the new commit has two ancestors and the "master" and "experimental" lines are joined again.

Displaying and Comparing versions of a File

If the current input is already a file, right-clicking Open on a commit will open an editor with the file content corresponding to the currently selected commit. If the file does not exist in the selected commit, an error message will be displayed. Clicking Compare with working tree will open a compare editor comparing the file content of the currently selected commit with the file content in the workspace.

The Open and Compare with working tree actions can also be executed by double-clicking on a commit: if the "Compare Mode" toolbar button (see below) is down, Compare with working tree will be executed, otherwise Open.

It is possible to compare the contents of two commits filtered by the current input by selecting the two commits and right-clicking on Compare with each other. If the current input is not a file, there is an additional menu action Compare with each other in Tree. The first action opens an Eclipse compare editor, the second opens the Git Tree Compare View.

Furthermore, it is possible to select any number of commits and right-click Open to see all versions of the file corresponding to the selected commits (one editor will be opened per version).

If the current input is not a file, then there won't be menu actions for Open. However, it is possible to double-click on an entry the Revision Detail area. If compare mode is active, a compare editor will be openend showing the changes for the file being double-clicked in the currently selected commit (i.e. a diff of the file content in the currently selected commit against the file content of this commit's ancestor). If compare mode is not active, an editor with the file content corresponding to the currently selected commit is shown.

Working with the Filter Settings

The filter settings can be changed using the corresponding toolbar actions (see below). By default, the "Resource" setting is active, i.e. only those commits are shown in the list that contain changes for the current input. If the current input is not a file, all commits are shown that contain changes for any child of the current input.

If the filter setting is "Resource" and the current input is a file, then the list of commits contains only those commits that contain changes for that file. This is useful when analyzing the history of that file. In some cases, however, it is helpful to also see other commits which do not change the actual file. For example, it may be interesting to see whether a given change in the file was before or after some other commit which does not change that file itself. In our example, we might want to know whether a given change was "before" or "after" the commit tagged as "Project1". By changing the filter setting from "Resource" to "Repository", this is easily done:

The behavior of the other two settings ("Folder" and "Project") is similar in that they include the commits that change any resource in the parent folder of the current input or any resource in the project of the current input, respectively. In our example above, if filter setting "Project" would be used, the commit "Add Project2 to Repository" would not be shown, is it doesn't change anything in the project of the current input (Project1/f1/file1.txt).

Alternatively, in order to see all commits pertaining to a specific project, one could change the history view input to that project. However, the file-specific menu actions would then not be available.

Toolbar actions

The first four buttons in the History View's toolbar are the standard buttons for Refresh, Link with Selection, Pinning and Navigation History.

Find

If the "Find" toolbar button is down, a search bar is displayed in the lower part of the view which allows to search for commits in the commit log. Depending on the setting in the drop-down list in the search bar the commit's title, comment, author or committer are searched.

The found search hits are high-lighted in bold and the "Next" and "Previous" buttons allow to jump to the next or previous commit matching the search criteria:

Filter settings

The next four toggle buttons in the the view toolbar control how the displayed commits are filtered with respect to the current input:
The buttons are working as radio buttons, i.e. one of the four buttons must always be down.

If the "Repository" button is down, the commit log is not filtered and shows all commits reachable from the currently checked out branch (or all commits, see below about the "All Branches" action)

If the "Project" button is down, the commit log is filtered to show all commits which affected any of the resources in the project containing the current input

If the "Folder" toggle is down, the commit log is filtered to show all commits which affected any of the resources in the parent folder of the current input

If the "Resource" button is down, the commit log is filtered to show only commits which affected the current input; the view menu item Show > Follow Renames allows to toggle whether renames of the selected ressource should be followed by this filter

Note that not all combinations of filter setting and current input are meaningful; for example, if the current input is a project, the "Project" option is in fact the same as the "Resource" option.

Compare Mode

The next button is again a toggle, activating "Compare Mode". If it is down, certain double-click actions (see above) will open a compare editor instead of a normal editor.

All Branches

This toggle activates the "All Branches" mode. By default, only those commits are shown in the commit log that can be reached from the currently checked out commit, i.e. the Commit Graph ends with the currently checked out commit and newer commits are not shown. If this button is down, all commits will be shown in the commit log. This is illustrated in the following picture from our example. The branch "beforeSplit" is currently checked out; by activating the toggle, the newer branches will become visible:

View Menu actions

Configuring the View

Most of the toolbar actions are available in the View Menu, too. In addition, the following four toggles are available:

"Show Revision Details" toggles the Revision Detail area and "Show Revision Comment" the Revision Comment area. The "Wrap Comments" and "Fill paragraphs" actions are only available if "Show Revision Comment" is active and govern the formatting within the Revision Comment area.

The first two actions are also available by right-clicking anywhere in the Commit Graph area, and the last two actions are also available by right-clicking anywhere in the Revision Comment area.

The preference Show > Follow Renames allows to toggle whether renames of a selected resource should be followed in the History View, if the "Resource" filter is used.
This preference can also be configured in the preference wizard Preferences > Team > Git > Views > Follow Renames.

Context Menu actions

The context menu in the Commit Graph area is slightly different, depending on whether the current is a File or a Folder/Project, respectively. The following menu entries are always available:

If the current input is a File, there are some other actions available; if exactly one commit is selected, there are three additional options:

and if exactly two commits are selected, the menu will appear like this:

If more than two commits are selected, only the "Open" action and the "Quickdiff" menu will be available.

Compare with working tree

This action is only available if the current input is a file and a single commit is selected. It will open a compare editor comparing the file content of the selected commit with the file content in the working tree.

Compare with each other

This action is only available if the current input is a file and exactly two commits are selected. It will open a compare editor comparing the file content of the selected commits with each other.

Open

This action is only available if the current input is a file. It will open an editor for each selected commit displaying the content of the file for the given commit.

Checkout

This checks out the currently selected commit. If a branch exists for this commit, the branch is checked out, if more than one branch exists for this commit, a dialog will be shown asking which branch should be checked out. If no branches exist for the commit, the commit will be checked out and HEAD will become detached.

Create Branch...

Creates a branch on the currently selected commit. A dialog will be shown asking for a branch name and whether the newly created branch should be checked out.

Delete Branch

This action will be enabled if a branch exists for the currently selected commit, which is not checked out. If there is a single branch on this commit, which is not checked out, this action will delete this branch immediately. If multiple such branches exist, a dialog will be shown asking which branches should be deleted. If commits become unreachable on "Delete Branch" a confirmation dialog will be shown to prevent accidental unreachability of commits.

Create Tag...

Creates a tag on the currently selected commit. A dialog will be shown asking for a tag name and a tag message.

Create Patch...

This action is not available on the very first commit of a Repository. It will create a patch containing the changes of the currently selected commit compared to that commit's predecessor. A dialog will be shown asking whether the patch should be created as file or in the clipboard and whether to use the Git patch format of the generic patch format.

Cherry Pick

Applies the change introduced by the selected commit on top of the currently checked out commit.

Revert Commit

Reverts the changes that the selected commit introduces by creating a new commit on top of the currently checked out commit.

Merge

Merges the selected commit into the currently checked out branch.

Rebase on top of

Rebases the currently checked out branch on top of the selected commit.

Reset > Soft/Mixed/Hard

This action resets the Repository containing the current input to the currently selected commit. Depending on the choice of the sub-menu, a soft, mixed, or hard reset will be performed.

Quickdiff > Reset Quickdiff Basline to HEAD

Quickdiff > Reset Quickdiff Basline to first parent of HEAD

These two actions set the quickdiff basline for the repository to HEAD or to the parent of HEAD. These actions are always available, even if more than one commit is selected.

Quickdiff > Set as Baseline

This action is only available if a single commit is selected; it will st the quickdiff baseline for the repository to the selected commit.

Copy

Copies the IDs of the currently selected commit or commits into the clipboard.

Show Revision Comment

Toggles the visibility of the Revision Comment area.

Show Revision Details

Toggles the visibility of the Revision Details area.

Wrap Comments

Only available when right-clicking on the Revision Comment area. If active, the comments will be auto-wrapped to fill the display area, otherwise the wrapping of the commit message will be used.

Fill Paragraphs

Only available when right-clicking on the Revision Comment area. If active, the commit message will be displayed without unnecessary line breaks.

Drag and Drop Support

You may drag and drop commits from the commit graph either onto a Mylyn Task or into a folder on your harddisk. In both cases, EGit will automatically create a patch you may attach to a bug or store on disk.

Working with the Revision Details Area

The Revision Details Area shows a table of the files that were changed by the selected commit. Selecting the context menu action Show Annotations on selected files will open the file in a (read-only) editor and display an annotation ruler with commit and author information for each line in a file. See this section.

Synchronize View

The menu command Team > Synchronize Workspace will launch the Synchronize View. This view allows you to inspect the differences between the resources in the local workspace and a local or remote tracking branch. Alternatively you may compare a local and a remote tracking branch. Comparison of two remote tracking branches as well as menu commands on the Synchronize View are not yet available in this EGit version and will be provided in a future release.

Here is what the Git Synchronize View looks like:

Synchronization State

The Synchronize View shows the synchronization state of resources in your workspace or a local branch compared to those in another local or remote tracking branch representing the state of a branch from a remote repository. This state is shown by using icons and can also be configured to show the state as text appended to the resource name.

A description of the icons is shown in the table below:

Icon

Description

An incoming addition means that a resource has been added to the target branch.

An incoming change means that the file has changed in the target branch.

An incoming deletion means that a resource was deleted from the target branch.

An outgoing addition means that the file was added to your workspace or source branch and is not yet in the target branch.

An outgoing change means that the file was changed in your workspace or source branch.

An outgoing deletion is a resource that has been deleted in your workspace or source branch.

A conflicting addition means that the resource has been added in your workspace or source branch and in the target branch.

A conflicting change means that the file has been changed in your workspace or local branch and in the target branch. A manual or automatic merge will be required. Also, any entries in the view that contain children that are conflicts will also be decorated with the conflict icon. This is done to make conflicts easy to find.

A conflicting deletion means that the resource was deleted in your workspace or source branch and in the target branch.

Mode

The Synchronize View can be filtered using modes using either the toolbar actions or the menu items in the view's drop down menu. Modes can be used to show only incoming, outgoing or conflicting changes.

Models

The Synchronize View is capable of displaying different model representations of the resources. Each product may contain its own product specific representations. The Eclipse SDK comes with three models:

Workspace Model

displays a resource based model. Layout options for this model can be controlled from the Preferences dialog in the drop down menu. The layout options for the Workspace model are

Flat layout

shows all the out-of-sync resources as direct children of their project.

Tree layout

shows the resource hierarchy as it is shown in the Project Explorer.

Compress Folders

shows changes grouped by project and then by folder. This results in a hierarchy that is at most three levels deep with folder paths being compressed into a single level (similar to a Java package).

Java Model

displays a Java based model (similar to what appears in the Package Explorer).

Git Commits

displays a Git Commit based model. This model shows incoming changes grouped by commit which is handy for seeing who released what and why. For outgoing changes, you can create commits by creating commits. The display format of the Git commit description can be configured in the preferences under Team > Git > Label Decorations in the tab Other.

In addition to to the models, there is also a Flat Presentation which displays all the out-of-sync elements as top level elements.

Navigation

The Synchronize view provides toolbar actions for navigating through the changes in the view. These actions not only navigate between files but also go from change to change within a file.

The tree in the Synchronize View can easily be expanded and collapsed from the tool bar.

Git Tree Compare View

This view will be opened by some of the Compare With actions (see Comparing Content). When started from a resource (e.g. a project or folder), it will look similar to the resources in the workspace. However, the usual icons on the files will be replaced with icons showing the change state (added, deleted, changed, or unchanged).

The changes can be browsed and a double-click on a file will open a compare editor for this file (this only makes sense on "changed" files, in case of added or deleted files, one side of the compare editor will be empty, whereas unchanged files will show the same content on both sides of the editor):

It is possible to hide unchanged files by clicking the "Hide files with equal content" button in the toolbar.

The Git Tree Compare View can also be started without having workspace resources as starting point (for example by comparing two commits in the history view when the input of the history view is a Repository and not a workspace resource). In this case, the complete content of the Repository is shown and both projects and folders appear as simple "folder" icons:

Git Staging View

This view provides an equivalent for git status showing changes made in the working tree. Unstaged changes which have not yet been transferred to the git index are displayed in the Unstaged Changes pane, changes which have already been "added" (staged) to the Git index are shown in the Staged Changes pane. By default these panes are displayed in a row layout, which can be changed to a column layout by the Column Layout option. The Staged- and Unstaged Changes panes by default show the full path of the files. They can be configured by the Show File Names First option to show the file names first, followed by the directory that the files are located in.

Double-click modified files to open a compare view. If fired from the "unstaged" pane the compare view will show the not-yet staged changes. When fired from the "staged" pane it will display the already staged changes. To open a file in the editor, use the Open Working Tree Version action on the file's context menu.

To stage a file, drag it from the Unstaged Changes pane to the Staged Pages pane. Alternatively, use the Add to Git Index action on the file's context menu in the Unstaged Changes pane. The Replace with File in Git Index action will replace the selected file in the working tree. If the file is unstaged, it will be reset. If it is staged, the working tree version will be replaced with the staged version from the Git index.

To unstage a file, drag it from the Staged Changes pane to the Unstaged Changes pane. Alternatively, use the Remove from Git Index action on the file's context menu.

The commit action will commit the staged changes only -- similar to what git commit does in native git. An intergrated commit message editor allows to edit the commit message for the commit. In contrast to the commit dialog, the staging view can be kept open while doing changes. This allows for incrementally writing the commit message along with the changes. The commit message being edited is associated with the repository, the staging view is linked with. It is not stored persistently and will get lost if the staging view or Eclipse are closed.

Git Reflog View

The Reflog View shows the Git reflog for a selected repository. It supports showing the reflog for a specific branch by selecting the hyperlink ref name in the top right of the view. Double-clicking or selecting the context menu action Open in Commit Viewer on a reflog entry opens the corresponding commit in the commit viewer. The context menu action Checkout will checkout the selected commit and the HEAD will become detached.

Git URLs

Git URLs in general consist of transport protocol scheme, address of the remote server and the repository path within the remote server and for some authenticating protocols also the user ID.

Git References

They all are named with a path using '/' as path separator and are starting with "refs".

Local branches start with "refs/heads/"

Remote tracking branches start with "refs/remotes/". Remote tracking branches proxy branches located in a remote repository so that their state at the time of the last transport operation can be queried also when no connection to the repository is available (offline).

Tags start with "refs/tags/"

Ref names can be abbreviated as long as the abbreviated form is unique. E.g.

"master" is short for "refs/heads/master"

"origin/master" is short for "refs/remotes/origin/master"

"v1.0.1" is short for "refs/tags/v1.0.1"

There is also a number of "reserved" names for Refs that are useful for certain scenarios:

Ref Name

Remark

HEAD

Points to the currently checkout out commit

FETCH_HEAD

Points to the result of the last fetch operation

ORIG_HEAD

Points to the commit that was checked out before a merge or rebse operation was started

For a complete list for Ref names and the order of precedence if multiple references have the same shorthand form see the section "Specifying Revisions" section of git rev-parse.

Refspecs

A "refspec" is used by fetch and push operations to describe the mapping between remote Ref and local Ref. Semantically they define how local branches or tags are mapped to branches or tags in a remote repository. In native git they are combined with a colon in the format <src>:<dst>, preceded by an optional plus sign, + to denote forced update. In EGit they can be displayed and also edited in tabular form in the Push Ref Specification and the Fetch Ref Specification and other dialogs.

The "left-hand" side of a RefSpec is called source and the "right-hand" side is called destination. Depending on whether the RefSpec is used for fetch or for push, the semantics of source and destination differ: for a Push RefSpec, the source denotes a Ref in the source Repository and the destination denotes a Ref in the target Repository.

Push Refspecs

A typical example for a Push RefSpec could be

HEAD:refs/heads/master

This means that the currently checked out branch (as signified by the HEAD Reference, see Git References) will be pushed into the master branch of the remote repository.

Fetch Refspecs

A typical example for a Fetch RefSpec could be

refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*

This means that all branches from the remote repository will be fetched into the corresponding remote tracking branches of the local repository.

Remotes

Remotes are used to manage the repositories ("remotes") whose branches you track from your repository.

In EGit Remotes are defined when

Cloning a repository from another repository, by convention this repository the newly cloned one has been created from is named "origin". If you prefer a different name the clone wizard allows to specify that.

A Remote first of all defines a name for the repository whose branches you track, this is important since you may want to track branches from different repositories so the name helps to understand what repository a certain operation is dealing with. In addition Refspecs specified for a given Remote define a mapping of branches and tags in your local repository to branches and tags in the remote repository. You may want to use different mappings for inbound or outbound transport operations hence there are editors to define Fetch and Push Configurations available in EGit.

Git Ignore

.gitignore files located in the working tree specify files that intentionally should not be tracked by git. They only concern files that are not yet tracked by git. In order to ignore uncommitted changes in already tracked files refer to the assume unchanged action.

Each line in .gitignore files defines a pattern. Git checks ignore patterns following the hierarchy of the working tree from highest to lowest. Patterns defined in higher level .gitignore files are overridden by those defined in lower levels.
Files which shall be ignored for all working on a given project are usually included in the project's repository to easily share them in the team.

Pattern format definition:

blank lines are ignored

lines starting with # serve as comments

the optional prefix ! negates the pattern. Files excluded by a matching previous pattern become included again. Patterns ending with a slash only match directories but not files or symbolic links.

patterns not containing a slash are treated as shell glob patterns matched against the path relative to the location of the .gitignore file

The EGit Ignore menu action adds the selected resource to the .gitignore file in the resource's parent directory. To enter other ignore patterns use a text editor.

Note: EGit does not yet respect .gitignore files outside Eclipse projects, so if you have a repository containing multiple projects you should add a .gitignore file for each project instead of a single one in the root directory.

Git Fetch Factory for PDE Build

As part of EGit's PDE Tools, there's a PDE Build fetch factory for Git included in the org.eclipse.egit.fetchfactory plug-in.

The map file file format: type@id,[version]=GIT,args

Where args is a comma-separated list of key-value pairs.

Accepted args include:

tag* - mandatory Git tag

repo* - mandatory repo location

path - optional path relative to repo which points to the element (otherwise it's assumed that the element is at the repository root)

prebuilt - optional boolean value indicating that the path points to a pre-built bundle in the repository

Fetching is implemented as a three-step process:

The repository is cloned to local disc. If it already exists, it is assumed that it was previously cloned and just new commits will be fetched